


Exception to the Rules

by bionically



Series: Love Fest 2020 [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: #TeamAphrodite, Convenient Sex, F/M, Fairest of The Rare's Love Fest 2020, Legal Drama, Opposing Sides, but Theo starts feeling things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:14:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22774711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bionically/pseuds/bionically
Summary: Theo understands Hermione Granger's need for rules. His own adherence to rules makes him exceedingly effective as legal counsellor. So why does he want to break her rules so badly?Fairest of the Rare Love Fest 2020 #TeamAphrodite
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Theodore Nott
Series: Love Fest 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1643674
Comments: 12
Kudos: 108
Collections: Love Fest 2020





	Exception to the Rules

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jess6800](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jess6800/gifts), [noxsoulmate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/noxsoulmate/gifts).



> Beta thanks to disenchantedglow for helping me with this!
> 
> Prompt: Theo/Hermione, secret dating

The first time it happened, they didn't talk until the very end.

Then, "This can't happen again," Hermione said.

"There are no regulations against it." Theo was unperturbed. He'd checked.

"No, but I've got rules against it."

He'd bet she did. She was a stickler for rules. She had all but memorised the entire Annotated Civil Wizarding Law: Procedures and Forms, and could list out the rules by their section numbers. He was simultaneously impressed and a bit disturbed by her thoroughness.

He shrugged. "That's fine."

He didn't move from his position on the bed, sitting slouched against the head frame. An arm was folded behind his head, and he had lit a cheroot with his wand. He watched her dress with narrowed eyes. She moved like a woman with a purpose. There was no coy shake to her hips as she pulled on her skirt and twisted it so that the right side faced front.

She paused just before letting herself out the door. With one hand on the doorknob, she turned to look at him. "Smoking’s bad for you, did you know that?"

"I've heard."

She locked eyes with him for a moment longer, probably regretting the night's work—or lack thereof, but she was as cool as a cucumber, even checking her watch briefly as she spoke to him. "Deposition’s at nine. Don't be late."

There was only the soft click of the door as she let herself out.

Theo continued smoking after she left.

* * *

The second time it happened, she had sent in a request for a few documents by owl. He responded, in a timely fashion, that they were not in his nor his client's possession.

Back and forth, they debated this until her head poked through the fireplace of his office. Green flames erupted from her mouth as she yelled from the low fire, "Rubbish! I know your client has it, Theo. I saw him take it out of his folio two months ago."

He leaned back in his chair and crossed his ankles on top of his desk, surveying her head. She looked like an angry, animated green mask. "Then he doesn't have it anymore."

"It's illegal to destroy evidence—"

"After trial has started, I know. Except he wasn't added to the list of defendants until a month ago." Theo twirled his wand so that it spun on the top of his hand before he caught it again. "Anything else?"

She was silent for a moment, her face swimming in the flicker of the flames. Then she stepped through the fireplace into his office. Green gradually poured off her, like liquid silk, until she was in full colour again, this time in person next to his desk. "If he knows he'll be involved in a lawsuit, he's under an obligation to retain any documents—"

"He didn't know, and you can't prove he did," Theo said, without moving an inch. His eyes surveyed her from top to bottom. Her hair had seen better days, and she was wearing slacks. He didn't like slacks on women. Too difficult to get off. She wasn't wearing a pullover shirt, however, and that was something he did like. One shirttail was hanging out and there were more buttons undone on the top than she usually had in public. She had clearly come from home, because her feet were bare. He cocked his head and noted that her toenails were bright purple—a very surprising bit of vanity on a woman who usually eschewed all aspects of femininity in public.

Her eyes blazed and he reluctantly lifted his eyes from her intriguing toes back to her face. "Don't pull that on me. We told him he could be liable."

"He doesn't take threats seriously."

"Control your fucking client!" she howled finally, slapping down a hand on his desk, making a stoppered bottle of ink jump.

And there it was—his opening.

He surged out of his chair and in the next second he was standing in front of her, so close their faces were only an inch apart. "Ask me nicely."

She poked him in the chest with her finger, but she didn't retreat. Of course not; she was Hermione fucking Granger. "Control your client, or else."

He considered it for a brief moment. "Good enough," he said and he curled one hand around the back of her head, through that grizzly terror of a hairdo and pulled her up into him. He was faintly aware of her hands pushing at his shoulders, not strong enough to be taken as any sort of a rejection. More like a token objection. He didn't take heed of objections, in the courtroom or not.

Their mouths slammed into one another before gentling, softening; secrets sealed between their dancing tongues. Hot breath intermingled and images danced on the insides of his eyelids. He saw bare skin, a sprinkle of freckles that looked like hundreds and thousands on top of a cupcake, and endless hair like something out of a Renaissance painting. He heard groans and moans and breathy exhortations; a slew of husky sounds that replayed in his head when she wasn’t there.

There. Don't stop. More. Harder.

His hands lowered to her nape, his thumbs circling the hollows under her jaw.

Then she pushed him away. "Have you been smoking?" Her nose was scrunched up.

It was a rhetorical question. He didn't answer tensorial questions. The lit cheroot was still glowing faintly on top of his desk, clear indication of his activities prior to her arrival.

She pushed back at her hair and sighed. "I can't be involved with someone who has questionable morals," she muttered, in a way that was more to herself than to him.

"Because of the smoking? I think that's more indicative of a health hazard." He laughed softly to himself.

"You know it's not just the smoking."

He didn't respond. His morals weren't questionable; he knew exactly what he believed in—himself. There hadn't been anyone else to believe in, after all.

She sighed and moved away from him, one hand on her hip. "Look. Can we just try to conduct this trial with some semblance of honour?"

"There's no honour among opponents," he said.

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Are you sure that’s the tactic you want to take? Do you really want to play hardball with me?”

“I don’t know what that means,” Theo said. “But there are other games I would be interested in playing…”

She sighed, and again there was that brief moment where she looked at her watch; that turn of her wrist so she could check the time. “I’ve got half an hour before I have to go back.”

Theo was already before her, unbuttoning her blouse and slipping a hand inside to cup her warm breast. He pinched lightly at her nipple and heard her sharp intake of breath as she closed her eyes and angled back her head. “This isn’t being billed to your client, right?” he said, nipping at her neck.

“Of course I wouldn’t—” Her head came up and her eyes snapped open. “Have you…?”

She was so easy to rile up. He sucked tenderly at her earlobe and sank his other hand inside the back of her trousers, feeling the warm, round curves of her buttocks. “Mmmm,” he said, just so that he could feel her struggle against him. He let her, just for a moment, before he danced her around and towards the wall. Then he pushed her slightly so that she tumbled backwards.

“Tell me you haven’t been billing this,” she said, frowning a little. Her eyes were concerned, rather than completely clouded over with desire.

He rolled his eyes even as he jerked down the collar of her shirt, sending the rest of the buttons flying off. He wormed his fingers under her brassiere and palmed her breast, hoisting her higher up on the wall. “If we’re going to be arguing ethics while we fuck, then I definitely will bill this.”

She shut up immediately, but he could tell it was still on her mind. There was that little crease between her brows, which was the last thing he saw before he lowered his open mouth over one rosy nipple.

* * *

There were so many things that had been beaten out of Theo from a young age that he simply didn’t understand Hermione Granger’s idealism. She was always on the crusade for another cause. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another.

She was always frowning. If it made her that unhappy, why did she keep at it?

Take him, for example. He was damned good at lawyering. First of all, he never got emotionally involved. He was invested only as long as the client could pay. Any amount above that, and he smiled politely to them and began drafting his Cessation of Services owl in his head. It was a good system.

He was still pondering this when Hermione’s face appeared in the fireplace and in tones unlike her usual urgent manner asked if his client planned to mediate.

She was so hushed and quiet that he considered her for a solid minute before she prompted him again.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, cocking his head to one side. "Doesn’t your client have sufficient funds to pay your overhead?”

She shook her head, but he didn’t believe her. Theo counted every single minute when it came to billing. He had several very handy spells to keep everything accountable to the second. That was also how he knew that Hermione Granger could come in under seven minutes.

“Well, I am urging my client to settle. As quickly as possible.”

“Right,” she said, still unnaturally subdued.

“Hermione,” he said.

Her face had been turned away, possibly in preparation for leaving the firecall, but at his exhortation, she turned back. Even with the green flames all around her, he could tell that she was upset, and it made him strangely irritated. Curiosity, that was what it was. He always did like to know what was happening.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” she said, but this time he heard it. A little chokey, a little stuffy; she was speaking with a runny nose, and somehow he had the feeling she had been crying. “I’ll—I’ll speak to you later.”

It had been weeks since the last time they fucked. He had been considering, while going down on her, that he did find himself unexpectedly entertained by her. She was so—animated. In everything. He didn’t think he had ever had a more excitable lover, and he had paid for some very good actresses. That day, after they were dressed, he asked her if she wanted to grab a bite to eat.

“Together?” Her eyebrows had been high on her brow.

“Well, we could sit with our backs to each other, or consider some other existential methods of eating, but yes, that’s the gist of what I was proposing.”

She had that frown between her brows again, the one that indicated she was thinking hard about it. He suddenly wanted to know what went on in her thought process when it came to him—did he rate as highly as an owl about courtroom scheduling, for example? Or perhaps even higher, like a client whose property had been wrongfully trespassed, resulting in a magical accident with lasting effects?

“I—that’s not exactly a good idea,” she had said, and for some reason, the frown on her forehead seemed to be catching. He never had anything to frown about, but he found himself frowning all the same.

“Alright,” he said slowly, as though to himself. He never ate with women, not in a date sense. What was he thinking? “Until next time then.”

He never became emotionally invested.

Yet he kept thinking about it even after they disconnected the firecall.

Now he rose from his desk and walked over to the fireplace, crouching down and poking at the ashes at the corners. All to get a better look at Hermione’s face. "Have you been fired by your client?” he asked, deliberately light. It had been known to happen in the years he had gone up against her.

“No!” she said, roughly wiping at her nose with a tissue. “I’m not charging him for this case, I’ll have you know! He’s very happy with me as his legal counsel.”

Of bloody course. Why had he bothered asking? Of course she wasn’t charging for something that she worked on night and day until she had shadows under her eyes and that perpetual frown between her brows.

“Anyway, I’ll see you—”

This time, when she turned her face away, he reached in after her and grabbed hold of a tendril of her hair. He felt a cool, tickling sensation as he shifted through the green fire, and then he was through and inside her flat.

Hermione gaped at him. He surveyed her features silently. He was right; she had been crying. More to the point, why should he care? If he were smart, and countless people had told him that he was, he would get out now. Now, before her little frowns and breathy excited laughs tied him up in knots so tight he could never break free.

“Why have you been crying?” he found himself asking instead.

She dropped her eyes. “I...Crookshanks died.”

“Who?”

“My—my kneazle.” She sent him a gaze that had a bit of her old spirit back, as though daring him to say anything about her state of mind. “And before you say anything, I know he was just a pet and they have shorter life spans and they die, but I’m sad about it, okay? And I don’t care what you think!”

That was when he realised everything she just said about her pet—with the worst name in the world—could apply to how he felt about her. She was just a girl. She wasn’t anything special. People died, as he knew from personal experience, and even before they died, they disappointed you. Sometimes they were idiotic, sometimes they were boring, and sometimes they were just plain maddening.

Hermione Granger had gone from the third category to being in a list all by herself; someone that he couldn't quantify, someone who had gotten his skin and made him feel... things.

He stared down at the top of her head, wondering if maybe her emotions were catching, and if so, whether he'd recover.

Then he gathered her in his arms and rested his chin on top of her frizzy head and petted her, until she began to sniffle and cry. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Maybe it was catching, but for once, he wasn't shielding himself or trying to extricate himself from the situation.

After awhile, she stopped crying and gazed up at him with red, watery eyes, and he still didn’t mind holding her.

Maybe, just maybe, just this once, he could make an exception to his own rules.


End file.
